There are endless flavour notes to coffee. You can practice observing these through a coffee tasting technique called coffee cupping.
In order to achieve the most consistent results, the “cupper” (which could be you) needs to follow very specific but simple procedures:
1️⃣ Grind the coffee in a bow
2️⃣ Smell the ground coffee
3️⃣ Top it up with hot water
4️⃣ Wait for 4 min
5️⃣ Break the crust that has formed with a spoon and stir three times.
6️⃣ Smell the aroma as this is happening and then you wait for a further 6 min
7️⃣ Taste it. Take a sip with a spoon, without disturbing the grounds at the bottom.
Then, write down the tasting notes you perceive. At first, it is a good idea to explore the nuances by focusing on whether the coffee tastes nutty or chocolaty or whether it has notes of berries or fruit. Once you start being able to identify flavours, you can start thinking which berry or fruit it could be.
Why not try it with our Moving Beans coffees which come in fully compostable coffee pods? You’ll be surprised how different coffees actually taste when you do flavour comparisons and how much more accurate you’ll become over time.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
What is the aroma of coffee? Is aroma and flavour the same? Aroma is one of the primary coffee qualities denoting a coffee's flavour along with body, acidity, sweetness, bitterness, and aftertaste. A coffee's aroma is one of the main categories used by professional coffee tasters (cuppers) to judge the quality of a coffee.
So, how do you evaluate the flavours of a coffee? Tasting something and being able to describe it analytically is both difficult and requires specific experience; that’s why it tends to be a little bit scary for many at the beginning.